OH NO

In a moment of weakness, I made a really bad impulse buy yesterday.


I'm now the proud owner of The Sims 2 University





I can't begin to describe how cool it is. I know I made fun of all of my friends who played boop boop beep too much (bomb armed, bomb planted, GAME OVER) but I'm really beginning to think my grades will be going downhill from here.

See you in 2 months when I'm bored of it!

I had this problem...

I was obsessed with the computer game The Sims. Obsessed doesn't even do it justice. I lost track of the time of day while I wasted away an afternoon with my imaginary people. I missed a meal or two (well, I probably just delayed lunch by an hour), and I dreamt about them at night. Over my break between student teaching and the start of the spring semester, it got really really bad. And then it happened--I got bored of the game. I stopped playing for almost 2 months. More like a month and a half maybe. But still, that was really good.

Until today. It was really cold. And snowy. And my roommates were gone...and I was bored. I saw my mouse double clicking on that happy little sims icon. And before I knew it, I had created new families and built a bunch of neat little houses, with hot tubs and pools, and one even with a fish tank. Just when I thought I could see the end of my sims obsession, it was a major setback day.





All day I've been listening to some little kids who are visiting the people upstairs. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing, or how they're not completely exhausted, but they've been pounding their little feet onto the floor right above my room for the entire day. I'm hoping they're going home soon, but I have a feeling I'll be hearing the not-so-angelic pitter patter at 7:00 tomorrow morning when they wake up and are ready for more jumping. Whatever happened to sitting quietly and playing board games?

I'm cranky

I actually don't mind having to wake up early on Monday (or this week on Tuesday) since it's the first day of the week that I have to get up early. At the end of the week it's a totally different story, but I'm usually all caught up in sleep so Mondays aren't bad. But last night it took me forever to fall asleep. And there's more to it than that. Being that we live in Somerville, our trash is subject to people picking through it for cans and bottles. Since my room has windows that face the street, I can hear it pretty well. And it tends not to bother me except for this morning, when I heard someone picking out glass bottles and dropping them one by one into something rattle-y sounding AT 5:55 IN THE MORNING. NOT EVEN SIX O'CLOCK AM!! WHO DOES THAT?!?!? I was so angry I couldn't sleep. I just boiled under my covers listening to the not so gentle "PLINK...PLINK....PLINK....RUSTLE RUSTLE (when he stirred the bottles up to make sure I could still hear him)....PLINK...PLINK...RUSTLE....PLINK. Needless to say I wasn't a very happy camper when my alarm clock went off at 6:36 (I have a thing with setting alarms at 5's or 10's.


I support this so much more between the hours of 8am and 10pm

Then I went off and spent way too much time with people under three years old. Even I'm sick of hearing myself sing, and that's saying something.

Crash and burn

I was thinking while I was driving this weekend that it's amazing that I have never hit a person while driving. It was never really a concern of mine while driving around the quaint little suburbs, but now that just about all of my driving is city driving, it seems likely that that will be my ticket into jail (where then I'll happily kick back on my (concrete) bed all day and read Cosmo. I'm certainly not the best driver out there, but I'm definitely not the worst, and it really surprises me that more people don't run over pedestrians. They're constantly jumping out in front of cars, especially on their way to Ghetto Basket.


I hope they'll lock me up at the jail right down the street, so I can hang out with Neil Entwistle when we're both bored of thinking about what we've done.

Kate shared an amazing picture of a Valentine's day card with me, but it's way too inappropriate to post. If you're intrigued, ask me for it and I'll gladly share it if I don't think you'd be offended.

I've had one song stuck in my head for the past 24 hours...and that would be the theme from Brokeback Mountain, which I finally saw this weekend. It's a fun little tune to hum. Or sing, or belt out. Classical music is really flexible like that.


I became a big fan of cowboys on Sunday night


It'll be ok, Heath..I miss Jake too

Fox in socks and green eggs and ham

If you've ever lived with me, shared a room with me, or talked to me, you probably know I'm not very good at sleeping. Well, that's not totally true. Usually after 4 or 5 beers I'm great at falling asleep and staying that way for at least 7 hours. But I'm not sure if it's a great idea to get in the habit of downing a six pack before bed every night just so I get a decent night's sleep.

So last night I couldn't fall asleep because of the socks I was wearing. I went to bed wearing dress socks (actually they were Kate's dress socks I think...Kate-remind me to explain that later). You know how dress socks have that little seam right in the middle, so there's no front side or heel side to them? Well, rather than lie on the top of your toes, like normal socks, that deam lies right on the tip of your toes on dress socks. I don't know why it bothered me so much because it's not that unusual for me to sleep in dress socks, but I was so uncomfortable and couldn't fall asleep. So finally I got up and changed into normal, white, athletic socks. And the seam still bothered me. So naturally, since I wasn't sleeping, I got up to look at my sock and see what was going on.

It looked like a normal sock.

But then I was trying to wonder what the point of that seam is. Any ideas? I don't really understand the clothing-making process, but it seems like in 2006 they should have machines that can make socks without that annoying seem that feels weird on your feet. It was a long, long night.

"Date my Mom" is the worst show ever

I had some beers Saturday night, and coupled with my excitement about getting a foot and a half of snow, it's not totally surprising that I got home Saturday night and copied & pasted from weather.com. Once I find a meteorologist to marry and talk about weather and moon phases and stuff, I'm going to be the happiest person ever. Saturday night was pretty fun though. We went to our favorite bar in Beacon Hill. I was so sure that I recognized a guy from college, and Kate asked him, and his answer was that he dropped out of college. Turns out though he did go to Union with us, which makes me feel proud that people are hesitant to say they went there. Although I remembered thinking he was cute when he was a senior and I was like 18, he turned out to be really really weird. He wasn't really picking up on the hint that we didn't want to hang out with him anymore (even when Kate and I were standing with our back to the girls' bathroom, and to get out of the conversation we simply leaned back and went into the bathroom). But the we finally got out of it when he got kicked out of the bar, so that made things a little bit simpler.

The snow storm was fun yesterday, except no one wanted to play! Really, when did putting on snowpants and jumping in snow stop being fun? I spent an hour and a half shoveling the driveway last night with Kate, which was uber cool since 7 people live in our apartment and we were the only ones who did it. Today I have a sore back because I'm old, and apparently lifted from my back and not from my legs. I know that's how you're supposed to do it, but I don't really get what that means. I didn't take pictures of the snow yesterday, but Kate did. See spagbals.

OMG SNOW

I love the snow! And I love the blizzard! And I love the beer!

Blizzard Warning from the National Weather Service:



A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 7 PM EST SUNDAY.

SNOW WILL INTENSIFY TOWARDS DAYBREAK. SNOWFALL RATES NEAR 3 INCHES PER HOUR ARE POSSIBLE. DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM LATE SUNDAY MORNING INTO SUNDAY AFTERNOON...BLIZZARD CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED. NORTHEAST WINDS GUSTING AS HIGH AS 60 MPH WILL PRODUCE WHITE OUT CONDITIONS WITH NEAR ZERO VISIBILITY.

TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS BY SUNDAY NIGHT WILL RANGE FROM 10 TO 18 INCHES...ISOLATED SNOW TOTALS OF 2 FEET ARE POSSIBLE IN THE AREA FROM PROVIDENCE TO BOSTON AND SOUTHEAST TO THE UPPER CAPE.



I want to play outside allllll day tomorrow. It's going to be lots and lots and lots and lots of fun. Sledding and snow angels (on mass. ave. obvi) and forts! Then Kate and I are building a gingerbread christmas tree!

P.S. drunk, sorry.

And while we're on the topic of "dapper"....

Hooray!!

http://thetrack.bostonherald.com/moreTrack/view.bg?articleid=124986

Now's my chance to move in.

I'm uber stressed out, and I have the sickening feeling that I'm going to feel this way from now until a year from June, with sporadic weeks of non-worriedness in between. And to top it off, my roommate won't let me come in to eat swedish fish and have 2 minutes of pima time to wind-down. I think the deeper issue is that I need to find other ways to wind-down. But to do that I need some time to think, on the pima. Life is hard.



It could be worse

You can't top a Stacy

The past two weeks I've been babysitting way too much. I know this because this morning I was ready to head out to babysitting, and I heard what sounded like a big truck backing up on our street... I looked out my window and my very first thought was "OOOHHH!! A DIGGER!!!!" Then I realized it was just me, and I didn't have to feign excitement (even though it was a little exciting to see a digger on our little dead end road). The 16 month old I watch is obsessed with trucks, and I've learned all about diggers, and loaders, and bulldozers. I've been babysitting more than usual for another family with a 2 and a half year old and a new baby...and when I got there on Monday, the mom told me that the 2 year old spent a lot of time this weekend playing "babysitter." She apparently pretends to be me, and comes in the door, puts a bag in the closet, and then feeds one of her dolls. Then she says "See you on Wednesday!" and walks back out the door. It's nice to know I have that power and influence on the short people.

I watched the superbowl with 2 1/2 very apathetic people (Gillian was mostly in her bed, but came out to have some 7 layer dip). It was sad without the pats playing, but I was really excited that Tom was there. I can't seem to find any pictures of him in his velour sports jacket...but the word that instantly pops into my head to describe him is "dapper." And speaking of dapper...Travis from the bachelor?? Not bad either. God, what a cool word dapper is.

I spend a little too much time clicking around on Myspace when I don't want to read about teaching reading anymore. I found a neat website where you can type in your name and get a slogan...hence, "You can't top a Stacy." I'm having t-shirts and mugs made up tomorrow, with this picture on it. You can visit that website & make your own slogan here. Share the good ones.

"She moves in such a way"

I had a great morning. Yesterday I won two tickets to go see Stephen Kellogg play in the WBOS studio. It was really cool...I took kate as my special guest, because she's special, and because she got me into s.k. It was just the two of us, 4 other fans, and then a couple of the wbos staff. Very cool.


But he didn't play my favorite song, so I was sad.

I also won tickets (in the same contest) to see him open for OAR tonight. But sadly I had class, and reeeeaaalllly wanted to skip it and go, but decided it was too early in the semester to waste my one skip.

So I sat in class hating learning, hating thinking, hating Gillian and Kate because I gave them the tickets (sorry gill and beta, but it's true). I hate the class, which is unfortunate because I realized in the past week--the first week of my reading specialist classes--that I don't really want to be a reading specialist. At least not for like 20 years, which is much more than the original 4 or 5 years I originally planned on waiting. It's not a fun feeling because I thought I knew for the past 4ish years exactly what I wanted to be doing in life, besides going to the beach a lot. I learned in my first week of the semester last week that I don't really like a lot of the things that reading specialists do, and I don't think I'd be that good at it. I stressed out all week because the class, and my hatred for the class, and because of my concern that I'm wasting the next 8 months of time and money learning how to be something I might never be. Instead, I could have applied for my teaching licensure a few months ago and even teaching right now. I suppose in the long run it won't really be a big deal. Even if I never ever in my life become a reading specialist, it should still (hopefully) help me get a job in the classroom in the fall, and (hopefully) get me a higher salary. But for now, it's going to be a really miserable 3 1/2 months.

Sorry Kate and Gillian. I'll buy you presents. Do you like M&Ms?